Manufacturing Consent Noam Chomsky

“Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media” is a documentary in which we can observe Noam Chomsky—in various interviews, debates and forums—make a relationship between big corporations and the media. In this documentary, Noam Chomsky makes us realize how we, the people, are conditioned to believe certain things in the media because of the business elites. This idea will be demonstrated through The New York Time’s coverage of the atrocities in East Timor and Cambodia and through Chomsky’s idea of “necessary illusions. At some point in the documentary, Chomsky discusses how big media corporations covered the atrocities that happened in Cambodia and in East Timor during 1975 and 1979 to elucidate the propaganda. The New York Times was the example given. We could see how The New York Times dedicated much less coverage to East Timor during the Indonesian invasion and the extermination that followed. They displayed bias in favor of the small group of people who have a certain amount of control over the society and did not covered both events equally. The New York Times payed a particular attention to what happened in Cambodia and almost ignored the genocide in East Timor. We were shown that East Timor received 70 column inches of entries while Cambodia received 1 175 column inches of entries. If The New York …show more content…
To him, there are 2 targets of propaganda; a political class of 20 percent of the population who are under the control of the business elites—they sometimes own it—and the masses (or the “people”) are alienated and controlled by the necessary illusions. The idea of necessary illusions represents the way the elite dominates how things happens with a part of the people (the 20 percent) involved and the other (the 80 percent) diverted and marginalized. The media is used and owned by the elite to create those illusions that are quite necessary to divert the masses from the political